Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

to become a supercommunicator, all we need to do is listen closely to what’s said and unsaid, ask the right questions, recognize and match others’ moods, and make our own feelings easy for others to perceive.

We all contain multitudes that are just waiting to be expressed.

High centrality participants tended to ask ten to twenty times as many questions as other participants.

(“What do you like about where you live?” “What was your favorite part of college?”),

When we match someone’s mindset, a permission is granted: To enter another person’s head, to see the world through their eyes, to understand what they care about and need. And we give them permission to understand—and hear—us in return. “Conversations are the most powerful thing on earth,” Lawler told me.

They’ve learned that paying attention to someone’s body, alongside their voice, helps us hear them better. They have determined that how we ask a question sometimes matters more than what we ask. We’re better off, it seems, acknowledging social differences, rather than pretending they don’t exist. Every discussion is influenced by emotions,

But the most important difference between high centrality participants and everyone else was that the high centrality participants were constantly adjusting how they communicated, in order to match their companions.

Supercommunicators know how to evoke synchronization by encouraging people to match how they’re communicating.

The happiest participants called others regularly, made lunch and dinner dates, sent notes to friends saying they were proud of them, or wanted to help them shoulder sad news. Most of all, happy participants engaged in many, many conversations over the years that brought them closer to others.